Monday, March 9, 2009

Virginia Woolf is Not My Boyfriend


Yes, she’s dead. Yes, she’s a chick. Etc. My concept here is casting a wide net.

I’m not saying I have a girl crush on Virginia Woolf. Well, her wikipedia pic does her way more justice than Nicole Kidman’s Oscar-winning fake nose in The Hours, but that’s not it. I just have this strange inkling that if I were alive in the early 1900s, we’d have been pals. Gal pals.

We were born 100 years apart and our names start and end in ‘V’ and ‘A’ so that automatically means we are kindred. All “V” names are kindred. I’ll bet it’s the same deal with “X”s and “Z”s. And redheads. Our minority binds us.

She had a half-sister called Stella and so do I. And I think stream-of-consciousness is cool and she like, broke literary ground with it. Plus, she had mood swings and I’m not saying that my mood swings are as severe as hers but I can go from up to emo-down in a minute if a fat day coincides with a bad hair day so we‘re counting the mood swings thing too.

And maybe she would have had a crush on me… I’m sure I’d have given Vita Sackville-West a good run for her money, and that’s another “V” name. Perhaps me and Vita and Virginia would have formed a kindred “V” triangle. Like an early 20th Century “L-Word” with “V”s.

‘Gin broke my heart in a “A Room of One’s Own” by pointing out that we will never know the work of a girl-Shakespeare because society would never have allowed her to write in her time. Thinking about the millennia of women’s voices that will never be heard, I swear I teared up for the Sisterhood (not of the Travelling Pants, just like, for chicks through history, yeah?). So much perspective we’ve missed out on…

It just makes me bloody thankful that we are living in the era of the Blog, and the Facebook status and the Twitter; in which every Tom, Dickhead and Harry has a voice, even if all it says is, “Today I went shopping and I couldn’t decide between full cream, skinny, semi-skinny, goats’ milk, rice milk and soy.”

I’m looking to buy a room of one’s own, too, just like Virginia (although she had an aunty die and cash her up with an inheritance so let’s be realistic - “A Shoebox of One’s Own” is where we’re at here. The first homeowner’s grant is good but it’s not THAT good). I plan to hole up in it and write things just because I can, and I’ll crank Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Woman”, realise that’s now a dated reference, quickly download Beyonce’s “Single Ladies and crank that instead and try and make up for the fact we'll never know a girl-Shakespeare and we'll never get our history back. But at least we have Beyonce and at least she's giving it a red hot go for the sistas.

Not that I’d have been able to admit it if Virginia really had had a crush on me in my "Me in the 1920s" fantasy. I couldn't even fathom the possibility of reciprocating because of social moirés I wouldn’t have had the guts to break two days ago let alone a hundred years ago.

The least I could do nowadays is start up “notmyclandestinefemalelover.blogspot.com” if I want. As long as my dad doesn’t read it and yell at me. Ginny would be proud.

1 comment:

  1. Yes! I totally get this. Hooray for combining feminist theory, Virgina Woolf and Beyonce in one blog. :)

    ReplyDelete

 
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